


Royalty, Radioactivity, and Great Reluctance

by AmityRavenclawElf



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Goofy Teens, Suspense, meme references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-26 04:25:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13850064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmityRavenclawElf/pseuds/AmityRavenclawElf
Summary: Princess Shuri is introduced to Peter Parker when Stark brings him to Wakanda.The rest is history, but will dark forces try to take advantage of the budding friendship/romance?





	1. First Meeting

"I think they need an adult," Shuri said, grinning.

T'Challa shushed her and tried not to laugh, himself. He was a king. Kings weren't supposed to laugh at guests. So, it was with the smallest of amused smirks that he fully entered the reception room where Tony Stark and his young apprentice were staring through the glass walls in amazement, looking out at Wakanda's extraordinary inner workings.

Well, "staring in amazement" might have been underselling it: In fact, the young boy was darting around, pointing things out and rambling out high-pitched sentences with a few "Mr. Stark!"s peppered throughout, and Tony Stark, who had initially tried to maintain his suave composure, was pacing, gesturing, and muttering aloud to himself about the technical implications of what he saw, growing slightly louder every time a new thing entered his field of vision.

Both had expressions as if they had been caught gorging themselves in the back room of a candy store when T'Challa made his presence known.

"Your Highness," Stark greeted him, spreading his arms wide as if he, too, was a king and was offering a diplomatic embrace. He dropped his arms after only a second, though, in favor of pointing at the scene out the window and stating, "Can I say, I am _speechless_. I...Kid, get down."

The apprentice was sticking six feet high up the wall, trying to get a better look at something. He dropped to the ground, scratching at his head awkwardly. "Sorry about that. Thank you for having us, Your Highness. Mr., uh, King Black Panther, sir." He made some attempt at a bow.

T'Challa could hear Shuri giggling from where she eavesdropped near the room's entrance, but the others didn't seem to notice. "And you are...?"

"He's my protege," Stark said loftily, although his eyes kept tracking the movement outside the window. "Peter Parker. You actually fought alongside him at the airport."

"Spiderman," Peter Parker added.

"He was tagging along with me for a different mission, but when I heard the borders had opened up, I decided to bring him on this field trip, too. I hope my email gave you enough advance."

"Sure." But there was a _reason_ that Stark was here, a reason that he hadn't taken the time to bring his "protege" home before coming straight to T'Challa's domain. "I take it you want to speak privately."

Stark paused a second, then dropped his pretenses. "That would be ideal." (He again turned away to make note of something outside the window, then snapped back to attention.) "The kid needs a rest, anyway. He could go back to the helicarrier, or, if you'd be so kind...?"

T'Challa smiled and decided to give his sister a chance to show off her brilliance to someone new. "Shuri," he called out.

Shuri entered the room with some of the laughter still etched into her face, but she maintained a regal dignity regardless.

"Peter Parker, this is my sister, Shuri, Princess of Wakanda and the architect of my suits and a lot of what is past that glass."

"You _made_..." Peter Parker's expression went as awestruck as it had when beholding Wakanda's beauty, but in a different way; this time, his face turned pink. "Uh, h-hi." He waved his hand, shifting idly on his feet. (Again, T'Challa saw that Shuri was laughing slightly.) "Hi, I'm, uh, I'm Peter Parker. Spiderman. I'm Spiderman."

Shuri's eyes lit up. "Right! You're the boy from the videos!"

"Yeah!" Peter Parker looked encouraged by her excitement.

"The red and blue suit," Shuri went on.

"Yeah."

"You flew into a pole!" Shuri giggled.

"Yeah. Wait..." Peter gestured spastically as if trying to manually rewind the conversation. "Wait, what?"

"You were swinging on the string," Shuri said, "and you flew into a pole, right? While screaming? There was a looping video of it intercutting your screams with the sounds of a screaming goat!"

"Oh! Right. Yeah..." Parker scratched at the back of his neck, but he was smiling self-deprecatingly. "I didn't, uh, didn't see that one."

"I'm curious; who made the webbing?" Shuri asked, tilting her head a bit due to the lure of intriguing science.

"I did," Parker said, with a smile that was proud but not smug. "I make a new batch every chemistry class."

"I'd love to see some. Do you have it on you?"

"Always," Parker replied, laughing nervously.

"Shuri, would you like to take Stark's protege for a tour of the lab while Stark and I talk?" T'Challa said.

"I suppose," Shuri replied, jokingly feigning reluctance. "Come on, colonizer. Ooh! Colo- _spider!_ " She beamed, waiting for applause that was not forthcoming.

T'Challa winced. "Please stop."

Shuri laughed, anyway; she was her own audience. She beckoned Parker forward; to his credit, the boy looked like he would have laughed were he not so nervous and enamored. "After the tour, there's a video compilation that I have to show you."

"Cool, okay! It's, uh, not just me swinging into things over and over again, is it?"

"No, it's better. Trust me."

T'Challa suddenly wondered whether he might have just made a dreadful mistake.


	2. Plans

"So, on the topic of that, uh...that foreigner, Peter Parker. Tony Stark's protege."

Shuri nodded patiently. "Peter, yes."

T'Challa took a reflective pause. "As your brother, it is not my place to govern your social life. But as your king..." (Shuri continued to nod.) "I understand you've been messaging him over the Internet."

"Occasionally," Shuri agreed, and she was suddenly smiling a bit, not so much with her mouth but rather with her eyes and through the dimples in her cheeks.

T'Challa couldn't deny that he was curious. Shuri had spent most of her formative years swooning whenever a member of the Dora Milaje passed into her field of vision, so he had always assumed that she preferred women exclusively. Of course, she and Parker could just be friends.

"As a matter of Wakandan security," T'Challa continued, "I have to ask. You are not revealing to him any secrets?"

"Of course not, brother," Shuri scoffed. "You think I'm just handing over our history to the third colonizer I meet?"

"I have to ask," T'Challa repeated, smiling. "Just because we are opening to relations with the world does not mean we can afford to divulge too much too soon."

"I'd never," Shuri said, half-teasing now. "Bast forbid! Imagine how annoying the Jabari would be then."

Shuri often joked about M'Baku's public denouncement of her. T'Challa suspected that it was because he had legitimately hurt her feelings. And that hadn't even been the most stressful thing to happen to her in the last few months. Unbidden, the image passed through T'Challa's mind: she had almost been murdered.

But before that, she had been a true warrior.

"I trust your judgement," T'Challa said. "I wonder...Have you started packing, yet, for your trip?"

"What trip?" Shuri asked.

"Your trip to America." T'Challa couldn't help but to smirk; it was rare that _he_ was the one surprising _her_. "I did already tell you that you are in charge of the scientific outreach program. That begins now."

Shuri was already beaming. "California?"

"And Disneyland," he said. "If you want." He handed her a credit card. "This is for you. Use it as you see fit, but remember" (His demeanor turned stern and regal.) "to show restraint. You are not there for frivolity. Frivolity is a reward for hard work."

"Thank you, brother!" Shuri exclaimed, catching him in a hug.

She would work hard. She always worked hard. In fact, T'Challa imagined that he would have to make frequent calls to be sure that she wasn't _over_ working herself. Shuri was passionate about progress, about improving on perfection, but even more than that, she had never really been doubted before. In Wakanda, everybody knew that she was brilliant. They accepted her thoughts and her words without fail even when they disliked that she was the one saying them. From what T'Challa had seen, the outside world would demand that she prove herself over and over again to the unworthiest of people, and he knew his sister well enough to know that she _would_. She would be excellent, and whenever somebody acted skeptical, she would be _more_ excellent, and T'Challa wasn't sure of where that road ended, but he couldn't imagine that it was good.

He felt a wave of worry, but he put it aside. "Remember, you will always be safe, no matter where you are," he told her. "The might of Wakanda is behind you."

Shuri saw through his words and patted his arm comfortingly. "Don't worry, T'Challa," she said. "I'll be fine."

"Worry?" T'Challa pretended to scoff. "I never worry."

...

"That. Is. _So cool!_ " Ned exclaimed, and Peter shushed him, glancing around to be sure that no one else in the cafeteria cared about Ned's excited outburst. He spotted MJ across the room, putting up the last few posters for a protest of some kind. She would be making her way towards their table soon.

"It's whatever," he said, putting away his phone and beginning to blush.

"You took selfies with the princess of Wakanda," Ned rambled. "That is _not_ whatever! It's the opposite of whatever!"

"We message sometimes, too," Peter said, and he was physically unable to keep himself from smiling. Even setting aside the how-on-earth-does-Peter-Parker-get-lucky-enough-to-even- _meet_ -beautiful-princesses factor, he was amazed, because he had never felt for anyone the way he did about Shuri. He wasn't even sure that it was a romantic thing; just being able to listen to her talk about science, being able to interject one thing to show that he _kind of_ comprehended what she was saying and see her eyes light up because of it and hear the love for her craft pour into her tone, being able to exchange dumb jokes with her, in person and online, and have her react like the jokes weren't dumb...all of those things just made him feel warm inside in a way that he didn't think necessarily needed to evolve into anything else.

But it could! And he would absolutely not complain!

Actually, he was going to discontinue this train of thought, because allowing himself to think of Shuri in a romantic context might ruin everything.

"So cool," Ned sighed. "You've got Tony Stark flying you to-"

"Shhh!" Peter hadn't seen MJ approaching; he had just sort of _felt_ it, like a strange extension of his senses, a feeling which he had started to develop every now and then. But he was glad for it now; he had barely stopped Ned from saying too much, and MJ moved pretty quietly.

"You can keep having your loudly-whispered conversation," MJ said as she sat down. "I really don't care."

Peter noticed- and he wasn't sure why he noticed it at all, because it wasn't, like, important or anything -that she wasn't sitting quite as far from them as she normally did. She had moved closer by one seat.

"You, uh, having a protest?" Peter digressed, gesturing at the posters she had put up.

"You can read that from all the way over here?" MJ noted in a flat tone.

"Uh...New prescription...contact lenses," Peter lied hastily, pointing to his eyeballs as if they were the proof.

"It's a protest meant to fire back at corporations," MJ drawled, thankfully ignoring his terrible lie. "Might offend your 'Stark internship' sensibilities." She smirked.

"Oh, really?" Peter found himself smiling again. "Try me."

"Alright. Protest starts at seven a.m. on Saturday. Be there or be a puppet to the bourgeoise." MJ ingested a bite of what looked like a tofu burger smugly.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Peter stammered. "I actually meant 'Try me' like ' _Tell_ me about it', like, to show that it doesn't bother my Stark intern sensibilities! I might be busy on Saturday."

"Busy with the Stark internship?" MJ teased.

Peter kept stammering incoherently for a second, but MJ just laughed at him and then turned away, effectively letting him off the hook.

Once sure that he wasn't expected to cut into his designated Spidey time with anti-corporate protests, Peter marveled; they had been bantering a little, just then. Somehow, the sheer amount of acerbity that one had to cut through in order to conduct a conversation with MJ made talking with her for any prolonged period feel like a privilege, to Peter at least. Like some other-worldly being was bestowing a cryptic wisdom upon him, despite his being a lowly mortal.

Wow, he _was_ lucky nowadays. How had this happened? He had had the _worst_ luck, when he was a child: dead parents, dead uncle. Now, while those things were certainly not erased, he had Aunt May kind-of, sort-of, with-many-conditions-and-limitations supporting his Spidey-ing; he had Mr. Stark's personal and financial contributions; he had Ned as his best friend and guy-in-the-chair; he was on the good side of Michelle Jones, who had probably the sharpest wit of anyone in the school; and he kept in contact with the genius princess of Wakanda!

Just as he thought this, Peter received a notification on his phone.

 **MemeQueen:** Ask me what I'm going to do.

Peter smiled. Shuri had insisted on that contact name. It was going to be "ShuriLock Holmes" with a magnifying glass emoji, at first, and then they had waffled between this and "TheLastMemebender", which had been his idea, but this was the one they had eventually settled on.

 **Peter:** What are you going to do?

 **MemeQueen:** I'm going to Disneylaaaaaaaaand.

Peter chuckled.

"Is that her?" Ned whispered.

"Ned," Peter protested, and he glanced at MJ, who had her earphones in and was looking away from them so deliberately that Peter couldn't help but believe that she was listening to them.

"Sorry. Is it?"

"Yeah, it is." He expected Ned to ask what Shuri was saying, but instead he asked:

"Do you think they screen her messages to make sure she isn't giving away national secrets?"

What a good question. Peter hadn't even _thought_ about that. "I...don't know." But Shuri probably would have brought that up, right? She would have disclosed it, joked about it. "I don't know. But let's not talk about it here."

MJ, meanwhile, was very, very quietly singing along to a song that Peter had never heard before: _"Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on? Tell me, which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on?"_


	3. The Protest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one was a bit difficult (hence taking so long), because Black Panther is a really political film and MJ is a rather political character, so I feel like it would be a poor job of me, writing-wise, if I didn't acknowledge their political aspects, but I also don't want this to become an Author Tract where I just sit here and hijack the story with my own beliefs. So what I tried to do here is keep all of the character ideologies as in-character as I can without making leaping assumptions or going on lengthy diatribes, and to keep the situations as realistic as possible while still enabling it to have a conflict and, like, story progression. I hope I accomplished that; this has been through a lot of edits, so if it's a hot mess, I'm very sorry. XD

After the send-off Wakanda had given her, Shuri thought that her spirits would never sink again.

Then she watched the news.

And she discovered that the downside to becoming exasperated while flying kilometers above the surface of the earth was that there was no lab onboard to let her science through her frustration. So she settled for screenshotting her most pompous detractors and sending the screenshots to Peter (because T'Challa would worry) with witty captions.

"So, you've read Princess Shuri's list of schools that she's visiting," an earnest newsperson interviewed a random American teenager outside of what must have been his high school.

"Yeah," the teen drawled. "I mean, we're the best school in the district, we've got the best scores, but I guess she's not visiting us because we're not a black school."

Screenshot.

 **MemeQueen:** Uh-oh, I made Smarty McFly mad. XD

 **InsertGoatScream:** I saw that interview. R u doing ok?

 **MemeQueen:** I'm fine. Now's a good time to build up an immunity, right?

 **InsertGoatScream:** Let me know if u need 2 talk...

"Obviously, Princess Shuri has released a statement," the newsperson plowed on, "that her focus will be on _underprivileged_ schools, and hospitals."

It looked like the teen was about to interrupt, but the footage cut away from the high school to a small crowd of people. A disembodied voice said, "Although the African princess is still en route," ("African princess". _Do they call the queen of England the "European queen"?_ ) "already the Oakland police have had to break up crowds of supporters _and_ protesters in her projected landing space."

Screenshot.

 **MemeQueen:** Ooh. Something to look forward to. O.O

 **InsertGoatScream:** Lol. Gooooood luck.

 **InsertGoatScream:** Am I still Goat Scream?

 **MemeQueen:** Of course you are.

 **InsertGoatScream:** CHANGE ME!

 **MemeQueen:** NEVER!

"It should be just another twenty minutes," the pilot, a fairly young Dora Milaje named Aneka, called out.

"Thank you," Shuri replied, taking a good stretch to brace herself. She could handle crowds, no problem, as long as she was well-braced.

"Are you ready?" Aneka added.

"Of course," Shuri said. "I was born ready."

"I suppose you were," Aneka said fondly. "Shuri, I'm sure you gathered this from your going-away party, but I just wanted to say it outright: Wakanda is very proud of you."

Shuri hadn't expected the words, nor the impact they had on her. Her eyes started to prickle as she thought of her mother's proud smile, her father's proud smile..."I'll try to deserve it," she said hoarsely.

"You already do."

To keep from becoming too emotional, Shuri took a few selfies and sent them to her mother with the message: "Almost there; twenty more minutes!"

Thirty seconds later, she received a paragraph-long message back about how proud Mother was that she was realizing her destiny and how, while Mother was adjusting to T'Challa's new policies, she was happy that both of her children had enough love in their hearts to reach out in this way and how they were pleasing the gods and their ancestors even with this strange, non-traditional path.

Shuri grinned, reading the message twice over. Mother was being what they called "extra".

She was going to miss home more than she had been expecting, wasn't she?

...

If asked, Peter would deny that his drifting nearer and nearer to MJ's protest while Spiderman-ing was on purpose. He would say that he was just making his rounds and come upon the gathering, that it had been a total coincidence.

He even sort of almost believed himself.

And it wasn't like the protest wouldn't have been concerning even if MJ weren't there. Already the small-for-New-York-but-not-uncommendable gathering was attracting the wrong kind of attention.

One of MJ's fellow protestors, for instance, had wound up in a loud argument with a man twice her size. And neither was pulling any punches.

Peter watched from the roof of a bodega as MJ inserted herself between the yelling blond girl and the yelling huge man, and his whole body went tense. He was prepared to rescue her (rescue _any_ of them) if things went awry.

"Have you considered," MJ asked, in just as low and casual a tone as she used in the cafeteria, while the redness left the cheeks of the quieting man before her, "that the exact problems you're raising are _also_ the fault of corporations that fail to take your wellbeing into account?"

"Unlike you, I actually know something about economics," said the man with disdain.

"So like, Aristotle, John Locke, Marx, Adam Smith, Herbert Marcuse, Thomas Sankara, you've got it all covered?" MJ managed not to sound sarcastic.

"This is idiotic," the man said, but he didn't leave; he just crossed his arms.

"What, so our ideas are open for scrutiny but yours aren't?" MJ challenged, still with an even tone. "Did you think you were going to walk over, throw your opinions at us, and not be engaged?"

"I don't have to defend myself to Communists," the man said.

"I'm not a Communist," MJ said flatly.

"Your friend has the Communist symbol on his poster," the man retorted.

"I'm not speaking for them," MJ said. "I'm speaking to you." (Peter started to relax; with her blunt, straightforward, and unaggressive manner, MJ was managing to diffuse the situation on her own.) "I think it's dangerous to define yourself by any ideology. Ideologically, I do favor socialism, but I don't let it define me. I just act on what I believe in. And I believe middle class workers like you deserve better and that no one should be a multi billionaire in a world where other people can't find water."

"That's _nice_ ," the man said, now completely cooled down but not relenting, "but how do you imagine those beliefs can be applied without...?"

And the situation was diffused. Peter zoned out; things were going fine. It was a debate, not a fight. He scanned the rest of the protesters and found that not all of them were as level-headed in dealing with detractors. The genderfluid twenty-something with the Communist sign to which the angry man had been referring was doing fine, rationally chatting up a curious passerby, but the blond girl had managed to find another argument and seemed not to have learned from her mistakes; this time, she was taking on two suburban moms, and it was all a tangle of "private property" and "means of production", and things were absolutely not dying down, especially not when the girl pointed at the probably-seven-year-old child accompanying one of the moms and yelled out a sentence beginning with "And you're bringing _your children_ up in a world where", and the shouting grew louder and even more passersby started to mill around.

Then MJ was ducking in to diffuse things again. "Sorry, Addison? May I speak to you?" she said to the blond girl.

Addison raised her forefinger as a warning, and Peter was reminded of a snake lashing out at someone who poked at it from behind. "Do not try to shut me up, Michelle," she said. "People aren't going to learn if they aren't allowed to be uncomfortable."

"We've drilled on the communication skills required to conduct a peaceful protest," MJ said. It was always intriguing, for Peter, when he got to see MJ in a leadership role. She was well-suited for it, because she didn't let people drag her into their levels of emotion.

"No one else gets lectured on their communication skills," Addison said firmly, but suddenly Peter's eyes were drawn to a wiry man who was separating himself from the gathering crowd to move closer to the protesters.

"Yeah, because everybody else _has_ communication skills," a boy around their age with a 'TONY STANK OWNS THE BANK' t-shirt on quipped.

"Ricky, that's rude," MJ said, and Peter became legitimately concerned that no one seemed to notice the man crossing over to the protester's; he was about ten feet away, now. "If Addison believes that she has been treated unfairly, it would be hypocritical of us to dismiss it without consid-"

The wiry man was upon them, and Peter sprang from the roof of the bodega just as the man loosed a torrent of pepper spray into the faces of the nearest protesters...or the man would have, if MJ hadn't noticed him at last and hastily shoved her companions out of the way, taking most of the fire herself as a consequence.

"Aah..." MJ's cry of pain was high-pitched, but not loud. She stumbled blindly for a second before dropping to a crouch. "Aah..." Tears streamed from her eyes.

"Hey, it's Spider-Man!" someone in the crowd called out, but Peter hadn't the time to pose or banter; half of the protester's had panicked and were attempting to flee, and while a few (Addison and the person with the Communist sign were the only examples Peter could see) tried to double back to help MJ, they were ultimately trying to swim upstream, and meanwhile MJ was in danger of being trampled as the panic grew and spread.

Peter dodged through the crowd the way only he (well, he and lots of other enhanced individuals; there were actually more than a few, but that wasn't really the point right now) could, making his way to MJ and scooping her into a bridal carry before she could get stepped on. "Don't worry, it's Spider-Man," he said when she tensed up. "I'm just going to get you out of here, okay? Is there someplace I should take you?"

"Midtown," MJ answered, and her voice actually shook. She had been frightened. "Take me to Midtown."

So, with long strides to escape the fray, Peter took her to their school.

...

Shuri stepped off the plane, preceded by Aneka with her Dora spear in hand.

There were Doras below, as well; a squad had been dispatched hours before her to assure that Shuri's living quarters were safe and secure. Shuri saluted them, and they saluted back.

As she descended the stairs, Shuri saw none of the crowding that the news coverage had warned of. In fact, the only non-Dora presence at the landing site was the line of American soldiers along the boundary (Maybe that was how they did things? Shuri couldn't say that she had ever landed somewhere in America with permission; maybe this was how cleared landings were treated.) and...

"Agent Ross?"

The shortish American man waved at her, then gave the Wakandan salute, which she returned with a perplexed smile. "How was your flight?" He offered a hand as if to help her down the last few steps, and Aneka shot him a suspicious look.

Shuri grinned. "That depends: Is this California?"

"No, it's Kansas," Everett joked back.

Shuri laughed, then asked the real question as they crossed the cement clearing (the Doras falling into walking formation in their wake). "The CIA sent you here?"

Everett sobered. "There have been some threats," he admitted. "And it's in the best interest of everyone involved that they don't come to fruition."

"What, threats against me?" Shuri prompted, and Aneka made a sound as if she dared someone to try something.

"Most people are happy that you're here; some people aren't. So, I was sent to...keep an eye on things."

"And to be accountable if something goes wrong," Shuri surmised.

"I...believe the higher-ups decided that if something happens, our relations with Wakanda would be the least threatened if the failure is mine."

Aneka clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth in distaste. "The 'failure'."

"My job is actually going to be pretty behind-the-scenes," Everett continued, glancing (slightly nervous) at Aneka, "so I was just dropping in to say welcome to America." He stopped walking and put out his hand, to shake this time.

Shuri took it and shook Agent Ross's hand once, firmly. "Well, I hope you do your job, because I'll be doing mine," she teased.

"Good luck," Everett said, departing.

"Who needs luck?" Shuri joked, but that one was for herself. She glanced down at her wrists, just to see the bracelets that could turn into arm canons if she needed them to. She was no Dora; she didn't even consider herself much of a warrior. But she would not be defenseless.

As she walked (following, now, the lead of the Doras, since they had actually _been_ to her new living space), she remembered the feeling of firing endless blasts but watching the enemy approach, unscathed, anyway. The feeling of being trapped, helpless.

She had improved the blasters. Had improved her own technique. And she would, she decided now, keep on improving until this feeling of apprehension turned to dust.

...

"Is that better?" Peter asked, wrought up with concern as MJ treated her own eyes. They were so red...

"Kind of," MJ replied. "You can go now; I'm safe, and you probably want to make sure everything's alright back there."

"Actually, the police have made it there, now," Peter said. "Which means my part of the job is kind of over."

"Like you never do police work," MJ scoffed.

"I do vigilante work," Peter protested.

"So, just police work except if you do something wrong they'll actually hold you accountable for it?"

Peter tried to reply but couldn't because Whoa.

"You really can go," MJ added. "Don't worry about me. All protests come with a little risk; I've just never had one actually go south. Or...not this far south."

"Can you see? I mean, do you need me to walk you home?"

"Relax, Peter."

"I just want to make sure that..." Wait. What? "I, uh...Why'd you call me..?"

MJ smiled smugly, although her eyes were practically shut. "Don't act like you're good at keeping secrets. Stark Internship, Spider-Man makes an appearance in DC right when we visit, your voice sounds exactly the same, and I said 'Take me to Midtown' and you assumed I meant the school."

Peter went bright red under the mask. "But...Well, you did mean the school."

"Yeah, but a non-classmate wouldn't have known that, you loser." MJ laughed at him, sounding...kind of dorky, in a way that almost made Peter smile despite the distressing situation.

"Listen...you can't tell anyone."

"Obviously. So who knows? Ned does; it explains why you two are whispering all the time. Who else?"

"Aunt May does, _now_. Mr. Stark does; he actually made me a new suit; it's really cool. Um...that's it I guess? Oh, and a few of the Avengers, and Princess Shuri of-"

"Shut up," MJ said flatly. "You got to meet Princess Shuri?"


	4. First Meeting, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wow, they meet right in time for Pride Month! I hope the dialogue is coherent.
> 
> Also, note for the future: I promise this isn't an after-school special. Like, the whole "racism" thing isn't going to be hit too hard; after all, we're trying to have fun here. But it exists, and it would be dumb to ignore it.
> 
> If they're OOC, let me know.

Shuri fell back onto her new bed.

The bedroom itself had no windows, for safety purposes (though the windows were floor-to-ceiling in many of the other rooms), so for the most part, only the two lamps on either side of her (one on each bedside table) illuminated the massive space. They were sufficient for the immediate area, but the edges of the bedroom were in complete shadow, which she didn't mind; she had never grown to fear the dark, because darkness was where the Black Panther stalked. Father, and then Brother. She had always known that the dark was safe.

She loved her "apartment".

(They called it that, but there was nobody else inhabiting the building. Well, a few scientists on one of the lower floors, with the levels and levels of laboratories dividing them. And of course the Dora Milaje, who alternated between guarding and sleeping in their provided quarters on her level.)

There was an indoor pool (Good; she loved to swim.), a chef (Good; she was not excellent at cooking.), so many soft surfaces to lie on (like this bed, which was such a comfort after a long flight), the _lab_ was amazing (not hers, but amazing; it was like coming across a brand new playground), and the view...

It was no Wakanda, but she didn't mind; she loved it. It had its beauty in different ways.

She could just imagine Okoye shaking her head, calling the scenery "heartless" or whatever thought she might have, and it _was_ strange enough that her eyes occasionally tried to interpret Wakandan architectural patterns where there were none, and it _was_ saddening to her how the place seemed, though not heartless, somewhat rootless, as if its original potential had been yanked from the ground and replaced, like a beautiful mural that had been painted over, but she could still pick out the underlying logic to it all. And also the underlying foolishness. But she didn't mind foolishness, not too much. She could see the tiny people down below, living their lives here, breathing, trying, and for the moment that was enough.

Her phone started to buzz in its spot on the night stand.

For a solid second, she debated ignoring it. After all, she had already had calls from her mother and her brother and even Okoye, and all of them had ended with her saying that she was going to have some rest. She picked up the phone anyway and discovered that Peter was requesting a video call (in two dimensions, unlike Wakanda's hologram calls; that took some getting used to).

She accepted the call and greeted, "Colonizer?" while Peter's face was still appearing.

There was a laugh from offscreen, and Peter glanced at the laugh's source with a look that Shuri thought resembled T'Challa when he was being double-teamed by her and Okoye's teasing.

"Hey, Shuri," he said with a grudging smile once his gaze returned. "Your flight was okay?"

"It was fine," Shuri said. "Who was that in the background with the great sense of humor?"

Peter started to point the phone at the other person, but a hand quickly covered the lens, and a girl's voice protested, "No!"

"Why not?" Peter asked in a hilariously perplexed whisper. "You said you wanted me to call her."

"I might have said that," the girl answered, and she had a funny way of speaking: sort of abrupt and flat, but in a cute way. "But it has since occurred to me that I am not, in fact, prepared for Princess Shuri of Wakanda to see my face."

Shuri couldn't help it; she was giggling now. "Don't worry about it!" she tried to assure the poor girl, but she wasn't sure how coherent she was to them, between the accent and the giggling.

Peter sighed, pointing the camera back at himself as the girl uncovered the lens. Shuri caught a glimpse of a buckwheat brown hand retreating from the frame. "That's Michelle Jones: MJ. She's one of my friends. She's...kind of had a bad day, and I _gathered_ that she's a big fan of yours."

"What's wrong? What happened?" Shuri asked, shifting into a more comfortable lounging position, facing her pillow with her phone parallel to the bed's headboard.

Peter managed to get out something about a mishap at a protest when MJ, still decidedly offscreen, said, "You know, I've discovered that I can't actually do this; I am overwhelmed, and I'm gonna go."

"Wait, wait, wait, no!" Shuri called out, perhaps too loudly, as Aneka poked her head in to be sure she was okay.

"You can't go," Peter said at the same time. "May's making vegan cookies!"

"Hang on, Peter," Shuri said, getting an idea. "Did you say I get to speak to _**the**_ Michelle Jones?"

"Oh my gosh..." MJ groaned, more distant-sounding; how far had she actually walked?

"Y-yeah," Peter said, stammering as he caught on. "Yeah. It was...Wow, it was _hard_ , getting you an audience with her..."

"Amazing," Shuri gushed. "I 'can't even' right now."

"She, uh, graciously agreed to let me make the call," Peter continued, while MJ seemed to be dying in the background.

"I'm 'bugging'," Shuri said.

"Yeah, and...hold on." Peter cut the charade short with an amused frown. "Did you...? Did you just say 'I'm bugging'?"

Again, it was too much. The giggles overtook her, this time at her own expense; that sentence, or her delivery on it, anyway, had felt weird even to her. "I looked up American slang. How was that one?"

"I mean...bad," Peter said, sounding blown away by the sheer badness. His expression alone was wonderful, but then the way his voice cracked on the word "bad"? Glorious.

"Yeah, that was garbage," interjected MJ, who seemed to have gotten all better, because, besides a slight hiccuppy laugh, her tone had gone flat and abrupt again. A second later, there was a creaky sound as MJ sat down beside Peter. Shuri caught a glimpse of a lock of dark brown hair and a shoulder dressed in what looked like a jean jacket. The mystery was truly torturing her, at this point.

"Hey, would you just put your face in the camera?" she chuckled.

"Nope," MJ said. And well, fair enough.

"Finish the story," Shuri urged Peter, who she caught gazing in MJ's direction with a sort of entranced look that she was already 500% in support of, and she had only "known" MJ for about two minutes. "What happened at the protest?"

He talked her through the day's events, and Shuri found herself knee-deep in protective affection both for MJ's courage and for the protective affection in _Peter's_ voice as he described it.

"Wow," she said once he was done.

They were silent for a moment. Then MJ broke it:

"Whatever. I made a bad call; my eyes paid for it. No big deal." As if that was the takeaway here.

"Michelle, did you miss the part where you were _amazing?_ " Peter asked.

"I'm pretty sure when you're 'amazing', the protest _doesn't_ end with everyone running off in terror."

"It's not like you're the one who broke out the pepper spray," Shuri said frankly. "I swear to Bast, you're just like T'Challa, blaming yourself like that."

"So, you just name-dropped the king of Wakanda, and I am disarmed," MJ stated.

"He's actually a really chill dude," Peter said, clearly trying to earn cool points on the name drop as well.

"That's Mr. King Really Chill Dude Sir to you, colospider," Shuri joked.

" _One day_ you're going to let me live down that introduction. I was _nervous_."

Aneka poked her head in again. "Princess, now would be the time to tell you that your brother instructed me to ensure that you get enough sleep."

"Ugh," Shuri sighed. "But I work best when I'm tired."

"Ohmygosh, tell me we're not totally sabotaging the most important instance of foreign exchange within the scientific community in recent history," Peter said, fitting all of those words into the span of about two seconds.

"Get some sleep!" MJ agreed.

"I'll be fine," Shuri said, but a yawn came out while she was speaking, likely invalidating her claim a little.

When MJ spoke next, the sound was suddenly crisp, as if she had moved the phone so that the speaker was next to her mouth. Indeed, the image now filling the screen appeared to be the bottom of a...was that a bunk bed? She thought she had seen something like that in an American movie. "Seriously, get some sleep. If even one person you meet tomorrow is trying to discredit you, you'll want to be running on as much energy as you can. People can be exhausting."

Shuri sighed. To be fair, MJ managed to give what was clearly a lecture in a very non-lecture-like way. Even when she made a direct request, she didn't _sound_ like she was trying to influence anyone's behavior; just rattling off facts. She was endlessly fascinated with MJ's way of speaking. "Fine. Goodnight, home slice."

"Yeah, just throw the slang research away," MJ said.

"I like it," Peter said with a straight face (having returned to frame).

Shuri giggled again but managed to bring her thumb down on the 'End Call' button. All at once, the room was silent. Shuri realized that she was even tireder than she had originally thought. She set her phone down on the night stand again and slowly turned off each lamp.

She was so spent, as she drifted off, that she missed the sound of something small and metal crawling along the wall behind her bed.

...

MJ exhaled.

 _Well, that was one for the diary,_ MJ thought, still feeling kind of jittery as she pulled on her sleep shirt (a plain t-shirt with a Les Miserables quote on it) later that night.

She had not only had the single worst protest in her entire personal history, not only been saved by "Spiderman" (while her eyes were in agony; in hindsight, it was a shame she hadn't gotten to enjoy it), not only crashed in Peter Parker's home for cookies, not only had an entire conversation with Princess Shuri of Wakanda...And those were _all_ completely valid reasons to be shaking right now...She had also actually gotten Princess Shuri's phone number.

And she was never going to use it. Absolutely never; that was decided. She was _not_ going to change her mind, absolutely not, _don't do it, Future Michelle, I'm serious_.

Even having met Princess Shuri as a human being who made terrible, terrible jokes and giggled like a pre-90's Disney princess and had dimples deeper than mankind had voyaged in the ocean didn't alleviate the feeling of intimidation. She could easily craft comprehensive arguments blaming all kinds of unfortunate societal norms for what she was feeling right now, but it wouldn't help her. She had recently discovered that it didn't really always matter what she _thought_ about something, if she felt differently.

Shuri was a genius. MJ could handle genius; she was always surrounded by different kinds of geniuses at school. But people like Shuri and Peter...they were science prodigies.

And MJ could do science. She made good grades in science class. She was pretty sure that the school would turn her near-perfect records in Language, Visual Art, and Sociology into actual confetti if she didn't also kill it in the STEM classes, so yeah, she could _do_ science...but she wasn't a scien _tist_. She could comprehend all kinds of things, but she doubted she could apply any of it, and she didn't really want to. It wasn't her passion.

But it was more than just not being a scientist; not being a scientist hadn't kept her off the academic decathlon team, after all.

She wasn't entirely sure what it was. She tried to make connections between these feelings and others, like the deep-in-her-stomach dread of Being Wrong that she had developed around the time that someone first told her how low Midtown's acceptance rate was (And man, it had been _such_ a mountain of getting-things-right that she had had to scale just to attend this school, and right when her self worth had been at its lowest with that gross middle-school-misogyny phase and the at-the-time-dawning realization of how often she was getting talked over by white kids.); or the fear of being replaced because maybe she wasn't a very palatable person? and maybe she knew she wasn't willing to change that for anyone, meaning everyone would always have better options; or just plain introversion...

The dots weren't easy to connect. It might have been because she was a teenager and everything was tangled hormones anyway. Or maybe society liked to gaslight teenagers so they would assume they were wrong whenever they questioned something. Or maybe...

No, this wasn't helping; just stressing her out.

 _Oh my gosh_ , she thought as she climbed into bed, tucking her hair into her black sleep bonnet as she went, _I'm crushing hard on both of them, and_ they _deserve each_ other.

Well, ow.

Maybe this _was_ one for the diary.

Her phone made a conch shell noise (her text tone) just after she turned off the light.

It was Abraham, from decathlon.

**Abraham:** Do we meet tomorrow? 

MJ smiled tiredly. Being put in charge of decathlon had increased the amount of regular contact she had with other people. Abe, in particular, always texted the day before a meeting to make sure there was a meeting.

She sent back a quick affirmative, returned her phone to its place, and pulled out her laptop. Put in the password. Opened her digital diary. Put in the password for that. Made an entry.

Even given how secure her digital diary seemed, she felt iffy about typing too much private information. Wary, like someone might be monitoring whatever she wrote, even though anyone able to do that probably had the resources to find out Peter was Spiderman anyway. She couldn't tell the reason for her unease (Sure, she kept a Band-Aid over her laptop's camera, but that was just common sense, in her opinion.), but she heeded it; she censored herself, said "Spiderman" instead of "Peter", but left in the Shuri stuff, because being saved by Spiderman and getting to talk to Shuri was kind of the whole reason she was making this diary entry in the first place.

She typed away, in the dark, crunching at a piece of toast that she had grabbed from the kitchen as a late night snack (and periodically having to blow breadcrumbs off her keyboard).

Once she had documented the incidents of the day to her satisfaction, she closed her laptop, finished off the toast, and curled up to sleep.

Elsewhere in the city, a giant computer was combing through every use of the name "Spiderman" on any private server in Queens.

On its owner's screen, MJ's IP address went from yellow to green.

...

Peter couldn't sleep, so he climbed out of his bedroom window and spent about an hour swinging on his webbing and flying through the air. It was hard to do this silently; after all, we was freely hurtling, and he couldn't even keep quiet on rollercoasters. So he screamed, but quietly. It helped that his suit apparently had a muffling function.

And speaking of his suit's functions, he had an incoming call from Mr. Stark. He answered it.

"Kid, isn't it past your bedtime?"

"I can't sleep, Mr. Stark," he said, and he was surprised by his own breathlessness and by the tone of euphoria that escaped him.

Mr. Stark seemed to glean a lot from the way his voice sounded. "Oh. My. Goodness, kid, do we have to have The Talk?"

Peter was seized by a most primal terror. "Th-the Talk?"

"The 'Girlfriends, Superheroing, and You' talk."

"Oh, that talk." Phew.

"I understand it's a difficult balance, and it's really none of my business what you do or don't do with whom; I'm not your boss. Well, I am your boss. Your team-boss, though, not your boss-boss. You get what I'm saying, here, kid?"

Peter hesitated. "I don't...think you've really said...anything?"

Mr. Stark sighed. "Restart. Let me tell you a story. A long time ago, please interrupt me, when I was just-"

"They're not really my girlfriends, Mr. Stark."

"Oh, are they boyf-...Wait a minute, _they?_ "

"It's not like that! Well...maybe? I don't know. It's just I introduced them to each other, and seeing them get along made me feel really good, so I'm kind of jumping over buildings."

Mr. Stark gave a low whistle. "You know, I never say this, but I think you might have travelled outside my realm of experience. I'll have to get you in contact with Thor, whenever he comes back from his cosmic Easter egg hunt."

"Cosmic Easter egg hunt? Wait, you're gonna introduce me to _Thor?_ "

"Go to bed, kid. Make it snappy. You're a growing...spider boy. You need your rest."

"But you just said I get to meet Thor!"

"I said 'whenever he comes back'."

"Well, where is he?"

"In space, cosmically hunting Easter eggs. Could take a while."

"You can't just name-drop Thor at one a.m., Mr. Stark."

"I'm gonna give your suit a curfew, mark my words."

"I'm going, I'm going. Goodnight."

It took a second, but Mr. Stark answered, "Goodnight." Then he hung up.


	5. Lucky Charms and Lucky Coincidences

Shuri's verdict was that she liked Lucky Charms. The green marshmallows were her favorite, even though she knew they didn't taste different from the other marshmallows. As a whole, looking at the colorful shapes floating in a bowl of milk made her feel like she was stepping into somebody else's childhood. She wondered if Peter or MJ ate these.

"Relax, Brother; I wasn't up _all_ night," Shuri emphasized. "I fell asleep right after the call."

"And how long were you on the call?" T'Challa asked, and somehow the pathetic cell phone's speaker managed to convey his skeptical expression about as well as a hologram would.

"Only about five minutes," Shuri answered evasively. The marshmallows were gone, now, and the little brown cereal pieces were turning into mush. "I've got to go; I'll call you back after work."

"I would say good luck, but..."

"But I don't need it," Shuri joked.

"Show them who you are," T'Challa said.

Shuri nodded solemnly, forgetting for a moment the lack of hologram. She really needed to sync up her tech from home so that it would work here; this was a nightmare.

"Baba would be proud," T'Challa added. "And you should be proud of yourself."

"I haven't done anything yet," Shuri said through half-a-mouthful of sugary milk. "I'll be proud when I've done something."

T'Challa ignored this. "Also, Shuri?"

"Yes, brother?"

"No Vine quotes on the first day."

She smirked around the spoonful of milk. "No promises."

They said their goodbyes and hung up. Shuri deposited her empty bowl in the sink and put on her shoes at the door to her room.

She was glad that T'Challa had called; her mind had been drifting to unfortunate places in the early morning silence. She was normally able to keep things light, or at least to make conversation with the nearest Dora Milaje, but every now and then, she found herself going back to that moment with Erik...with N'Jadaka, when her blasters had failed and she was on the ground, at his mercy, almost killed. Her wits had departed from her in that moment, driven away by mortal terror, and she had been left with only a steely conviction like her mother's; she had said, "You will never be a true king." That was something her mother would have said. But moralistic defiance had done nothing to protect her. So often, she went back and thought of what she _could_ have said: 'It would be tactically advantageous to keep me alive.' Something smart. Something...else. It could have bought her time. She should have been trying to buy time. She had almost been killed.

But there was no use dwelling on that, was there? She lived, and she was wiser for it. She _was_.

"Are you ready, Princess?" A Dora she didn't recognize fell into step behind her as she made her way toward the elevator. The woman was slighter than most warriors and lighter-skinned than most Wakandans.

"I'd better be," Shuri joked. "If not, I'm in trouble."

The elevator doors opened, and Shuri's heartbeat sped up despite her casual words.

"Oh, Bast," she whispered as she entered it and the doors slid closed. Being watched and listened to was nothing; there was no rank that could intimidate her; but there were ways in which she was sensitive. M'Baku had touched upon it; 'We have watched with disgust as your technological advancements have been overseen by a child!'. The words were nothing world-altering, but the sentiment that she was not best-fitted for the job that she was doing terrified her. Just because something worked- the "something", in this case, being herself -did not mean it could not be improved.

But she could make herself better, and would make herself better, at every moment. No one would have an opportunity to notice her lacking, because the very moment she fell short would be the moment she built on herself tenfold. She was Shuri Udaku, daughter of Ramonda and T'Chaka, and this was her passion and the mandate of her brother the king.

 _Easy as riding a hover-bike_ , she reminded herself, and then she remembered how Agent Ross had said that they didn't have hover-bikes on the outside, and this comforted her immensely. So many trivial, elementary things would be world-shattering revelations here, and she liked to see people excited. She liked seeing a person's eyes light up with appreciation for what was possible; it was always like science was her best friend and she was watching her best friend receive thunderous applause at a recital. _Let the science sing_ , she thought.

The people she was going to meet would be strangers, yes, but they all spoke this language, had all played an instrument in this orchestra.

The elevator doors opened to one of the laboratory floors, and what parts of her hadn't already relaxed did now, because this was her habitat.

It wasn't quite like her lab. For one thing, everything was shinier, because, for the most part, the silvery-colored metals were the ones used here. Irons, steels...almost no vibranium. T'Challa was carefully controlling how much vibranium was allowed out of Wakanda and where it went, so he couldn't very well make every floor of this building wall-to-wall vibranium. That would invite conflict. For another thing, this laboratory was not underground...which did not explain why there were so many bright overhead lights, but Shuri assumed it was a cultural thing.

"These Americans sure like their light, don't they? Not a shadow on the premises," she said to the Dora, who smiled.

From the elevator, there was a hallway to the lab-adjacent facilities (the bathrooms and the scientists' lounge) and, parallel, a glass wall leading into the actual lab. Shuri pushed open a glass door on the glass wall and entered onto a noisy metal platform (Was this _tin_ or something?), below which the visiting scholars and scientific staff were gathered, looking up at her, hushing their conversations.

Okay, she _had_ to lord it over them for a _second_. She was only human. She stood on the platform for a moment, sweeping a gaze over her domain, soaking everything in. Just for a moment, she stood on Wakanda's excellence.

Then Shuri walked down the noisy metal stairs to meet her fellow scientists on even flooring.

Metal stairs. In her lab, there were huge spiral ramps, beautifully painted...

But hey, these had a certain bounce to them, and there was something satisfying about the rattling sound as metal jostled metal with each step. A different kind of music.

"Good morning," she said. "Glad to see so many of you made it in." At the bottom of the stairs, she unhooked her labcoat from the wall and put it on in one smooth motion. She was feeling bubbly, almost giddy, which worried her because she was going to have to express herself clearly. She decided to test the group by throwing out a light comment: "Sorry if I'm a little jittery; I'm a bit jet-lagged and I just had Lucky Charms for the first time this morning." That got a laugh, but a very low one. Oh, well; here we go.

She swept a very quick gaze through the faces in the crowd, half-hoping Stark or some other familiar face had shown up on a whim to lighten the mood, but no such luck.

"Princess Shuri," a voice spoke up, and a balding Caucasian man (who, now that she thought about it, _did_ look familiar; hadn't he been on the news or something? Not for science, though...) with a tablet poised to take notes put out a hand to shake. "I'm Dr. Erik Selvig. This is my colleague, Dr. Jane-"

"Dr. Jane Foster," the colleague, a brown-haired woman, interrupted, and she also shook Shuri's hand, with a smile that somehow made her look as if she were out of breath. "It's a pleasure to meet you. The possibilities that are opened up from this tech alone..." She waved a hand at her surroundings with an awestruck expression.

Shuri beamed, and black-suited man who could have been played by Wes Bentley chimed in, "I'll say. Hello, I'm from Oscorp."

"'From Oscorp' doesn't sound like a name," Shuri teased.

The man smiled. "Dr. Bart Hamilton. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I've been following the statements released by your king, and I will say, the concept of the 'kimoyo beads' especially intrigued me. I wondered if we might discuss those first."

"All respect, Dr. Hamilton," another voice interjected, and a short, curvy woman with a warm face stepped forward, "but I have an invested interest in learning about Wakanda's shielding technology. We can hardly expect the princess to derail her teaching plans for our particular areas of interest."

"It's just Shuri; you don't have to call me 'princess'," Shuri said. _No, Supreme Overlord is fine. Hehe!_ "And I didn't get _your_ name?"

"Alaska Welkes," the woman replied. "I work for Advanced Idea Mechanics."

"A.I.M.," Dr. Foster said, frowning slightly. Clearly she recognized the name, though Shuri didn't. "Didn't they-?"

"We are working to rebrand and reestablish ourselves. Our previous CEO's ideas were phenomenal in theory but were executed...unfavorably, to say the least." Alaska Welkes flashed a self-deprecating smile. "But we're back on the right track, now, and we hope to carry out a more positive vision."

 _So, that's two vaguely suspicious people to look out for so far._ Shuri smiled. A chill had gone up her spine, but there was also the unmistakable tingle of power coursing through her. These people had their secrets, certainly, but _she_ knew things that they didn't, as well. She was used to being needed by her brother, by her people, but never by someone who might not have good intentions. It was troubling, but intriguing and, in some ways, pleasant. "Well, you all keep telling me your names, and we'll start the tour."

...

"Morning, Penis," Flash said as he went to his seat in homeroom.

Peter huffed and rolled his eyes, but what he didn't expect was for MJ, behind him, to snark:

"Brave of you to stick to that joke, Flash. In an era where memes have a shelf life of eight days max, you've spent months playing up a slang word that belongs in nineteenth century England."

Peter turned in his seat, but MJ was sketching in her notebook as if her riposte meant nothing to her.

Ned, on the other hand, was chuckling.

"Shut up, Ned," Flash said.

Ned took no notice, nor did Peter; both had turned their attention to their phones, where the News app had sent them a notification. "Oh, yeah," Ned marveled. "That science exchange thing in California is starting today." In a whisper, he added, "...with _Shuri_."

Peter could only nod, because he felt like his stomach was floating. Shuri. MJ. Geez, was he still thinking about this? "H-how was your weekend?" he asked to change the subject.

"Bought another external hard drive so my computer runs even faster," Ned humble-bragged. "Specifically my tracking software. If you ever get, like, kidnapped by a bad guy, I am _on it_."

"Shhh." Peter found himself smiling. "First of all-"

"Good morning, class. Everyone take your seats," Dr. Morgan called them to attention. Peter was instantly curious. Normally, it was the student news crew (the terrible, terrible student news crew) that kicked off homeroom; broadcast was due to start in three minutes. "Alright class. As I think we're all acutely aware, summer break is coming up, and for those in need of summer programs to join, there is an out-of-state STEM program looking for interns."

"Interns?" someone repeated.

"Yes; if accepted, you'd be helping out the lab assistants."

"So, like, a lab assistant assistant?" Ned mused quietly.

"What state is it in?" MJ asked.

"California," Dr. Morgan replied, and Peter's curiosity turned to rapt attention. "Oakland, California. Those selected would be aiding lab assistants for the Wakandan science outreach project."

Peter filled with determined energy, and somehow he could just _tell_ , as if from some sixth sense, that MJ behind him was also at attention. The idea was somehow already forming in his mind, so quickly that he had to tell himself not to get overly invested: They could win an internship at the lab in Oakland, could learn about all of those things (well, being honest, _some_ of those things) he had seen in Wakanda, and with _Shuri_. If he, Ned, and MJ all applied and got selected...

He was so busy thinking of the possibilities that it didn't even cross his mind what a lucky coincidence this was, how odd that such an important lab would be recruiting from high schools, and now, and here. It didn't occur to him how orchestrated it seemed.

All he knew was how awesome it would be if he and his friends could spend their summer in that lab.

...

"Absolutely not."

"Why not?" Peter heard the almost-whining shrillness in his voice, but he couldn't pay mind to it; MJ was leaning against her locker with an almost bored-looking smile.

"Because I'm not a STEM dork, Parker," she teased.

"Are you kidding? You got the winning points for the Academic Team."

"You weren't there. Hey, Ned," she added as Ned exited the boys bathroom. They had been waiting for him, and now all three of them made their way toward the cafeteria together (which they had never done before).

"I wasn't there," Peter agreed, "but I heard about it from everyone; I heard that you were awesome. Even Flash said you were great. They made you captain _because_ you're great-"

"Listen, I'm not a STEM person," MJ said again. "I can learn things in any subject, but think about it: If they're taking applications from New York, they're probably taking applications from everywhere in the country. The people who get chosen are going to be the people who were on Lego robotics teams at five years old, or who build drones from scratch and race them, or who work really closely with Tony Stark."

"It's so weird that she knows now," Ned interjected. "It's like I can just _say_ things."

"As opposed to before?" MJ said, but there was no edge. In fact, her smile softened. Peter wondered if she actually had different smiles for him and Ned, and then he decided that he was not going to continue thinking about this, because analyzing people's smiles was a bit too much of a swan dive into Creepville for his liking.

"It's up to you, if you don't want to do it," he said.

"I know," MJ answered.

"...but there's no harm in applying. The worst thing they could do is say no."

"Actually, the worst thing they could do is put your name on some list where they keep track of ambitious young scientists to mind control or kill," Ned said, and MJ pointed at him as if he'd taken the words right out of her mouth.

"You've been watching political thrillers again," Peter chuckled.

Ned shrugged. "It was on TV. My grandma fell asleep on it, but I might never sleep again."

They arrived at their usual table.

"I...might apply," MJ said as she sat down beside Peter. It took him a second to process her words; he was surprised that she was actually sitting _with_ them, now, instead of just near them. She had been inching closer for a while, but now here she was, matter-of-factly spreading out her lunch on the table in front of her.

"You should," he encouraged.

"Then again, even if the stars aligned and I made it, I couldn't exactly drop everything and go to California. I have my orthodontist..."

"You could contact your insurance and ask them who you can go to in Oakland," Ned suggested. "And then ask your orthodontist to send them your files."

MJ picked at a slice of bread. "Whatever. It's dumb. But I'll apply. I want to check out Berkeley's campus, anyway, and maybe I could do some protesting at a fresher venue. Or join in protesting with the big dogs."

"You're considering Berkeley?" Ned asked.

MJ shrugged ambivalently. "I've had some people say I'd do well in California, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. On the plus side, I've heard it's windy at Berkeley, so I could wear my jacket every day."

"You just want to show off all your pins," Peter teased.

MJ smirked at him sideways. "Don't call me out, Peter."

"It would be really cool if we all got picked," Ned said wistfully. "We'd get to see Shuri. Peter could fight some Californian crime. I'll bet Hollywood has so much Star Wars stuff."

"This is starting to sound like your 'Go to England to see the Doctor Who stuff' dream," Peter observed.

"Hey," Ned said, mock-affronted. "It's _our_ dream."

"True," Peter conceded, and he and Ned proceeded to execute the lamest fist bump of all time.

"You losers," MJ said fondly, and she took the application sheet from Peter when he offered it to her.

"Crap, you're right, though; Peter can get a letter of recommendation from _Tony Stark_ ," Ned said, almost sounding _actually_ affronted this time.

"White boy busting out his corporate contacts," MJ joked, and she had a full smile on as she laughed at that, not that he was noticing her smile at all. "Maybe I'll text Shuri and ask her to put a good word in."

"I'm pretty sure we actually could do that," Peter said reasonably.

"No. Wouldn't be fair," MJ replied, serious all at once.

"I wasn't saying 'do it'," Peter qualified. "Just saying, we probably could."

"Don't get corrupted by all this 'Stark Internship, chat up the monarchs' power, dude," MJ warned. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

"Oh, right," Peter said sarcastically, gesturing at himself. "Because I've got all this 'absolute power' here. I'm not even sitting in a cafeteria seat; I'm hovering on a dense mound of raw power."

"There are at least three words in that sentence that you should never say again," MJ told him, but he had startled her into chuckling again, just a little.

"Was it 'cafeteria'? Was 'cafeteria' one of them?" he asked, faking earnestness, and she kept laughing, slightly harder now. Was he actually funny? She was laughing like he was actually funny, and it felt like soaring.

"You're so lame," she said, still smiling a bit. Then she put in her earphones, which meant that she was withdrawing from the conversation, and Peter and Ned continued to chat about the internship and about California, and if he kept tuning in to MJ's quiet humming along with her music, that was the super hearing and completely not his fault.

...

**"You were successful?"**

**"Yes. Very."**

**"What did you hear?"**

**"Enough. Here, I've written up a transcript."**

**...**

**"And?"**

**"And...I think you're right; I think they might do our work for us. Or at least most of it."**

**"Good. ... But don't get complacent. This has to go off without a hitch, and if something unexpected happens, you need to be ready to get things back on track. That's on you."**

**"I know. I will. I won't let you down."**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (whisper whisper)
> 
> What's that you say?
> 
> (whisper whisper whisper)
> 
> "Spider-Man: Homecoming" took place during homecoming season and "Avengers: Infinity War" was still during the school year, therefore this fanfiction cannot possibly exist in the timeline if summer vacation is about to happen?
> 
> (confirmation whisper)
> 
> Get out of here! (sprays water, sprays water, sprays water) And never say that my fanfiction isn't canon again! (throws spray bottle away)


	6. Expired

"So, that thing you said earlier..." Peter started, and a sardonic part of MJ went _Oh well, here we go_ and wondered if she had inadvertently said something embarrassing or weird. She, Peter, and Ned were all in Peter's room, eating popcorn, doing homework, and filling out the internship applications. May wasn't home, so the only sounds in the apartment, when they weren't actively conversing, were the faintly-audible music from Ned's headphones, which were around his neck, and the police scanner on Peter's desk leaking out staticky conversations on minor crimes: standard teen superhero stuff. "...about memes having a shelf life of eight days," Peter finished his sentence, and MJ snorted.

"I stand by it," she said. "And don't think I didn't notice you dab at lunch today."

"You mean I dabbed...right in front of your salad?" Peter said, smirking like he was incredibly proud of himself.

MJ threw popcorn at him, then turned her head (but not so much that she couldn't still see Peter giggling). "Ned, I'm disowning Peter."

Ned looked up, having been at work unravelling a math problem for the past several minutes. "Huh? Why? Do I have to disown him, too?"

"Thanks, Ned," Peter said, picking kernels of popcorn out of the bedspread.

MJ vacated the swivel chair to help him, since the mess was her fault and she was a gentlewoman. She noticed that Peter kept glancing up at her and wondered if there was something in her hair, but she didn't care enough to check.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Huh?" Oh, shoot. Was she actually right about that?

"The song you're humming."

"Oh." Oh. She hadn't been fully aware that she _was_ humming. "At _this_ moment, I'm humming a song that I made up." And if that sounded lame, whatever; it was the truth.

"Cool. Does it have words?" It was probably the note of innocent curiosity in Peter's voice that made her actually want to share.

MJ cleared her throat, kept her eyes on the popcorn, and quietly sang, "Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can."

In the literal split-second of silence, MJ nervously looked up and saw that Peter was grinning at her as if she had just belted out something Grammy-worthy. "Um, that's my theme song _forever_ now," he said incredulously.

She smiled but said, "Shut up. I just...made it up, a few days ago." _I was singing it in my head when you saved me at the protest._ Yeah, he didn't need to know that.

"Is there more?"

"No. You think I just sat somewhere and, like, composed an entire song about you? I have a life, Parker."

"You have a good voice, too."

She cleared her throat again. "Uh, thanks." She stood up, since the popcorn was cleaned up, and returned to the swivel chair. Her face felt warm.

"Does Lego count as a hobby?" Ned asked. Apparently he was either done with or breaking from his math homework, and he was back at the application.

"Yeah," Peter and MJ said at the same time.

"Points if you call it 'recreational Lego engineering' or something like that," MJ added.

"Then you have to put 'song composition' or 'recreational music engineering' on yours," Peter joked.

"Music engineering. 'Yes, I am a _musical_ engineer'."

"It's probably a real thing."

"It's _definitely_ a real thing, but that's not what it means."

"What does it mean?"

"I don't know."

"Google it."

"I'm busy. You Google it." MJ trailed off, though, because as she was speaking, Peter suddenly raced across the room to the police scanner, apparently having heard something. What MJ could make out through the heavy static was coded police jargon, but it seemed to mean something to Peter; he straightened with an urgent look.

Immediately, Ned took his headphones from around his neck and tossed Peter the supersuit that was draped over the back of the chair MJ was occupying.

Peter caught it, turned to MJ, and said, "Could you turn around for a second?"

MJ swiveled so he could change. "What's the emergency?"

"Building collapse, sounds like. Some huge computer warehouse. But there are people trapped in the basement." The sound of changing clothes paused. "You can turn around now. Anyone see my mask?"

MJ swiveled back around. Peter was in the whole Spidey suit (It was quite form-fitting.), but no mask. He pulled at his bedcovers to see if it was underneath them.

"I think it was on the chair," Ned said. "MJ, are you sitting on it?"

She stood, and lo and behold.

She peeled Spiderman's mask from her seat, feeling a mix of stunned hilarity and contrite chagrin. She had just sat on Spiderman's mask like it was a TV remote. "I am so sorry," she said, even though she was sure it wasn't damaged.

Peter hastily grabbed the mask, pulled it down over his face, and with an over-the-shoulder "If May comes home, tell her not to worry!", he disappeared through the window.

"Well," MJ remarked.

Ned discarded his headphones on the bed and grabbed, instead, a headset with a microphone. MJ was tempted to comment that one of those things was obsolete, but Ned seemed kind of busy; he dug his laptop out of his bag, powered it up, and (as MJ moved so that she could look over his shoulder at the laptop screen) spoke into the headset: "Spidey, do you copy?"

...

"Loud and clear, guy-in-the-chair," Peter panted out. He was making record time, swinging from traffic lights.

"Your destination is just a few blocks away. You're doing good."

MJ's voice was also faintly audible: "So, that's him?" (The sliver of his mind that wasn't laser-focused on getting to where he was going imagined her poking the part of the screen where the device in his suit tracked his location on the map.)

"Yeah," Ned answered her. "That's him, and the warehouse is over there."

Even as every part of his body was exploited to get the optimal speed, Peter felt like he couldn't move quickly enough. He knew how terrifying it was to be trapped under debris. To not feel strong enough; to be helpless. He couldn't dwell on it, because the remembered fear would distract him, but he knew what it was like.

"You're gonna turn here."

He rounded a corner. He would have known to turn even without the instruction; the police lights were illuminating everything nearby. Almost nobody noticed him until he was standing in the wreckage among them. Yes, this was a leveled building, alright, with damaged computers all over. The cops were gathered at a pile of cement slabs covering what seemed to be a stairway into the ground.

"Those are the stairs to the basement?" Peter said.

The cops turned and collectively groaned at his presence. "Get out of here, okay? We're asking nicely; we cannot have civilians in the mix. We're trying to save lives."

"I can move the cement," was all Peter said.

"Don't. You jostle them wrong, and someone gets crushed."

This gave Peter pause. If this was the ferry all over again, but this time worse...He couldn't interfere; not until he verified that interfering was the right thing to do. "How long before you guys are able to save them?"

Most of the cops seemed determined, if he wasn't going to go away, to ignore him, but one spoke up: "A few hours."

"They can't wait that long; this is too precarious as it is." Peter lowered his voice: "Karen, can we get the cement out of the way quickly enough?"

The display screens in front of his eyes took a geometric analysis of the blockage and the opening. The voice of the AI spoke: "We can, but you'll want to make sure that there is no one on the stairwell below, to account for margin of error."

"Boost my voice," Peter instructed his suit, and when he next spoke, it was at an artificially heightened volume: "EVERYBODY GET BACK! I'M ABOUT TO MOVE THE DEBRIS!"

He gave them fifteen seconds to comply, and he spent those fifteen seconds placing himself at the best angle, relative to the stairway, to tackle this problem. _It's not going to be another ferry. It's not going to be another ferry._

...

Apparently, Americans were not used to seeing teenage girls walking down the sidewalk flanked by adult women with spears.

It was a bit funny, how they stared and backed away. In Wakanda, she walked with the Dora Milaje all the time, but it was never a spectacle. It was just how the royals traveled; it was only as worthy of notice as a motorcycle would be, as opposed to a car; not as common, but nothing worth pausing over.

The way passersby behaved here made it actually fully register to Shuri, _Oh yeah, these are deadly weapons, and we're walking around with them like it's nothing._ Maybe they would leave the spears at home, next time she wanted something from the cafe...The Doras were plenty deadly without them...

Anyway, the warm, soft pastry weighing down the paper bag in her hand was its own reward.

Her work day was over, now; it was about seven in the afternoon, and the sky was midway through changing colors- the goddess Nut changing her gown. Shuri was feeling the most relaxed she had all day. The past few hours had been either all excitement or all sober consternation. She had spent the entire time acquainting herself with her "class" and going over the basic and the lesser-known properties of vibranium, but on the whole (with the exception of Dr. Hamilton, who seemed only interested in the kimoyo beads and apparently had difficulty pretending otherwise) the scientists had left for the day seeming happy, especially Dr. Foster, who had been chattering jubilantly with Dr. Selvig.

Now, until tomorrow morning, she was free. She had changed out of her lab gear, into an olive-colored ankh shirt and a jean skirt, and she was now wandering in search of a place to sit down and eat her pastry. The cafe had been too cold; it was the air conditioning. Wakanda had AC, of course, but it was (not to be condescending) more refined; the cold was just enough to balance out the heat, the heat just enough to balance out the cold.

"Princess Shuri!" a voice behind them called out.

The Doras tensed, but Shuri just turned around curiously.

Striding up to them with a smile was a boy who was noticeably taller but not, by appearances, very much older than Shuri herself. He was pale, dressed business casual, with a pointy chin, straight hair, and a winning smile. He was _sort_ of handsome, maybe, but not to Shuri's tastes. Not that that mattered at all.

"Hello," she said to him.

"Hi." He put out his hand for her to shake, and when she took it, he clasped and shook her hand with firm intensity. "Harry Osborne," he introduced himself.

"Charmed," Shuri answered.

"...of Oscorp," the boy added when it was clear that Shuri had never heard of him. "I'm the CEO."

"Oh," she said; the company name rang a bell. "You sent Dr. Hamilton to inquire about the kimoyo beads."

"Yes, and he told me he had no luck," Harry Osborne replied, with a chuckle like this amused him.

"Well, my brother has entrusted me with control over the flow of information," Shuri told him, with crossed arms and a mild-mannered smile (which she had no way of knowing was very reminiscent of the way her brother smiled when dealing diplomatically with agents and leaders of foreign nations). "We can't be too hasty."

"Oh, I understand completely," Harry Osborne assured her. "I know all about being a part of a dynasty."

Shuri saw the Doras exchanging a scornful look in her peripheral vision. "Oscorp has been around for a while?" she guessed.

"Oh, yes," Harry agreed, and Shuri couldn't tell who instigated it, but now they were walking together (the Doras still flanking her closely). "My father was very strict about dealings with the public...the 'outsiders'."

"You do seem careful," Shuri confirmed lightly, her mind starting to stray back to her pastry. Harry Osborne was very un-subtle about his attempts to relate to her, and her answer on the kimoyo beads wasn't going to change in the near future. And the icing was starting to smear on the inside of the bag...

"I just hope Oscorp can work closely with your scientists," Harry said. "We do a lot of work in a lot of fields, and your tech could really help us to change some lives."

"It's all about philanthropy," Shuri said, almost sounding unironic.

"We do stand to benefit financially," Harry conceded. "We're a company; profit is a part of everything, but profit for us can be profit for everyone."

"Then why not cut out the middle man, let _everyone_ profit, and leave you out of it?" Shuri asked, with the slightest hint of a smirk.

Harry started to answer, paused, then waved his forefinger at her. "You're sharp," he said. "I like you." Then he jogged away without another word.

"Who runs in a blazer?" Shuri joked to the Doras.

"The king, probably," one of them answered just as lightheartedly in Xhosa.

"True," Shuri said.

They found a table with chairs in a plaza of sorts and sat down. Well, Shuri sat down, and she urged the Doras to do the same, but they stood anyway. Shuri finally got to munch on her treat.

Her phone rang, suddenly: a call from Peter. Well, from "Insert Goat Scream".

She answered it, to chaotic noise on the other end: Peter was breathing heavily, and there were frantic voices and sounds like stones scraping stones.

"Peter?!" Shuri said loudly into the phone. "Are you alright?"

"Shuri?" Peter responded between breathless pants. "How are you on this call? Did you hack my suit or something?"

"You called me," Shuri answered, slightly offended by the accusation.

"Is that Princess Shuri?" another voice on the call, sounding like another boy their age, gasped.

"Yeah," Peter answered, sounding somehow even more strained, like he was trying to hold up a rhinoceros. "Shuri, Ned. Ned, Shuri. Karen, why did we call Shuri?"

A computerized woman's voice answered, "You said to play a soothing sound to distract you from the dire circumstances, and when I asked what sound, you said 'Surprise me'. An analysis of your personal history pointed to either Shuri, Michelle, or May as the best choice for verbal comfort. Michelle is already on the call, and May-"

"-would kill me. Right," Peter finished, a grudging note in his voice. "Well, hi, Shuri. It's not that I don't love hearing from you; I'm just kind of dying right now."

"What's going on?" Shuri asked.

"Collapsed building," Peter answered. "I got everyone out of the basement, but something happened up top that made the cement shift; now I'm trapped down here until they can get me out. I'm holding up a lot of weight here."

"What about Stark? Can't he help you?"

"He's in Brunei right now. He sent some suits; they're moving the debris. It's thanks to them I don't have to wait a lot longer." There was a beat of pause. "So, how was _your_ day?"

Despite herself, Shuri laughed at the absurdity.

"Really," Peter urged. "Tell me about the exchange, or about a song you like, or your lunch. Just something that isn't crushing me to death slowly, talk about it. Please."

"Nothing too classified," Shuri said, trying to keep the nervousness for Peter's predicament out of her tone, "but..." She launched into it. As she had said, there was nothing classified in her story; she made sure of that. And she spoke quietly, so that the other people in the plaza didn't hear. But she spun the tale, about how her lab here looked different from her lab at home (which Peter had seen anyway), and about how odd it was that the Doras were so _noticed_ here, briefly peppering in Harry Osborne, and about all sorts of other things, from Lucky Charms to cafe pastries..."I've been eating a lot of sugar today," she noticed aloud.

"Well, you earned it," Ned's voice replied with awe, which sounded strange to Shuri; was sugar something earned, here?

"Being a scientific pioneer and standing up to Big Business earns you _Kellogg's_ , Ned?" another voice snarked.

"Michelle!" Shuri exclaimed delightedly. "I was wondering when you'd speak up."

"I've been here," MJ said vaguely.

...

Yes, here. Here _dying_ over what that A.I. had said. She made the list for sources of comfort in Peter's life?! What early-2000's teenage rom com was she living in?!

 _At least the down-to-earth girl-next-door type ends up with the guy in those,_ a sarcastic voice in her mind pointed out, and then the rest of her mind _vomited_ , both at the suggestion that "getting the guy" was even, like, a factor in her decision-making right now, and at the implication that she couldn't just as feasibly run off with Shuri.

Feasible. Right.

 _TV rots your brain,_ MJ told herself half-heartedly.

The point was, there was a lot to take in right now. Peter was being crushed to death, Shuri was bringing about world-changing revelations, and none of them were done with their homework. And yet her mind kept frantically throwing movie tropes at her like the 'Life or Death Situation' section of her brain was closed for repairs.

"Peter, you still doing fine?" she prompted.

"Right as rain," Peter said, his voice high-pitched to belie his claim. "If I don't make it out of this alive, though, I want to hear you say 'He protec, but he also attac' at least once."

"Never," MJ said flatly.

"Peter, that's cruel," Shuri giggled.

"It could be my dying wish," Peter pointed out.

"Then perish," MJ said, and there was a silent pause before Peter, Shuri, and Ned lost their _minds_.

...

Peter's muscles felt like they were made of Jell-O when he finally crawled in through his window. He meant to immediately tell his friends about the strange hard drive he had discovered on his way out of the warehouse, but he wasn't given the time.

"She's here," MJ said as soon as he dropped, exhausted, onto the bed.

"And she is _not_ happy," Ned added.

Peter sighed. May supported him in most things, but she wasn't thrilled about the dangerous vigilante work.

"She's in the kitchen, making spaghetti," MJ said, turning away so he could change out of his hero gear. "She took the computer so she could see where you are on the map."

"She's making what?" Peter weakly set up an easy quip.

"I'm not going to say 'spaghett' or something," MJ sighed.

"You just did," Peter said, then he left the room.

Soberly, he entered the kitchenette, where May was chopping up vegetables beside a laptop screen showing him to be home.

"Hey, May," he breathed.

"A collapsed building?" she said.

He sighed. "They told you, then?"

"It was on the news," May said.

"No casualties," Peter offered.

"I'm glad," May agreed. She set down the knife, scraped the chopped vegetables into a bubbling pot of sauce, then turned to face him, leaning back against the cabinets with her elbows on the counter. Her forehead wrinkled. "You know...that I know...that you've reached the age where it's important that you decide some things for yourself and make mistakes..." She paused, shook her head. "I don't know how to keep letting you do this."

It broke his heart, how lost his aunt looked. Not quite like when...when Uncle Ben...

Almost, though.

"And I know you 'have to'; I mean, you were sneaking out to do it before I found out, and I'm sure you'd sneak out to do it if I told you to stop...because you think you have an obligation to save people, now that you can. I don't know if I'll ever forgive Tony Stark for egging you on." May sighed.

Peter didn't say anything to defend Mr. Stark. He could think of all kinds of excuses, but he didn't say them. He didn't know if May could take that.

"Be careful," was May's conclusion. Then she pulled him into a hug and kissed his forehead. "You're filthy. Go get washed up before dinner."

"Larb you," Peter whispered.

"Larb you," May said back.

A half-hour later, they were all eating spaghetti, and Peter kept his eyes on his plate so that no one could tell he still had the outlines of falling cement slabs hanging like a haze over his vision. Relaxing made it worse; it was like he could see the debris falling on him.

But he laughed at their tentative jokes and smiled indulgently when May said he was falling asleep at the table.

Even through the lingering anxiety, there was a weird, somehow-coexisting sort of contentment, hearing Ned joke and MJ chuckle and May wield her own sense of humor like it was a butterfly net to keep them all from falling too deep into themselves. And there was also curiosity, about the hard drive that he had discovered literally underfoot as he left the warehouse: the seemingly-innocuous thing that had been near-pristine-looking on the floor of a collapsed building and had been marked in Sharpie with the words 'P E T E R P A R K E R' .

He dwelled on those feelings as he finished his meal and as he said goodbye to MJ and Ned for the night.

...

Shuri was pajama-clad and turning down her bed when she noticed an odd shadow on the wall of her room, like a giant claw. A quick glance at the room's light sources gave her a pretty high certainty that whatever was throwing the shadow was inside the left bedside lamp shade, so she stalked soundlessly toward the lamp.

When she arrived to peer under the lampshade, however, there was no interference to be seen, and looking back at the wall revealed that the shadow had disappeared, too.

She supposed it could have been an insect.

She didn't trust that answer, though.

She was about to go get her bag out of the closet to scan the room for hidden surveillance or similar foreign contents, but just as the thought entered her mind, her phone vibrated.

 **InsertGoatScream:** R u awake? It's important

She took her phone up and sat down at the edge of the bed.

 **MemeQueen:** I am. What is it?

A minute later, tops, Peter sent back a whole paragraph, some of it misspelled in his haste, which was a real picnic for someone for whom English was not a first language.

 **InsertGoatScream:** Ok so u kno the bldng that collapsed, well bldng was this huge compter warehouse like there were destryd computrs everywhere, but there was also this external hard drive that was completely unharmed??? and I took it, bcuz it had my name on it fr some reason idk idek. I checked it, and it's insane. It's full of stuff abt me that no one is supposed to know, like ya know secret identity stuff, and I texted Ned n MJ, too, but I guess they're sleeping.

Once Shuri had managed to read through the message and comprehend all of it, she texted back:

 **MemeQueen:** 1- You plugged a strange hard drive into your personal computer??? 2- So it was left for you to find? A hard drive with ur name and info?

...

It was so late, it was early, but Peter's heart was thudding. The hard drive was on his desk; he had disconnected it as soon as he was made aware of the scope of what its owner knew: both of his identities, his family (dead and alive), his doings with Mr. Stark, even photos of him in public as Peter and as Spiderman...

 **InsertGoatScream:** 1- I know, I know, stupid curious dummy me. 2- I think so! And there's this encrypted part, too, that I can't figure out and I'm too scared to try.

 **MemeQueen:** GoogleDoc it. I'll check it out.

 **InsertGoatScream:** U sure?

 **MemeQueen:** I have a whole lab here; it's safer for me. I'll maybe take a crack at it tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for the amazing comments! My heart sings whenever I see one!
> 
> Btw, I take fanfiction commissions at https://amityravenclawelf.tumblr.com


	7. Tiny Robots and Roller Skates

T'Challa couldn't help finding it a bit ironic that bringing the two people in all of Wakanda who asked him to update them on Shuri's doings the _most_ often (albeit for very different reasons) into the same room for the first time resulted in the fewest mentions of Shuri he had had out of them since she left.

"Why were we not made aware that there was a colonizer inhabiting your lab, _King?"_ M'Baku demanded, gesturing at the one who some now called the 'White Wolf': Bucky Barnes, who sat on a lab table with his wary gaze set unwaveringly on M'Baku.

"By 'we', do you mean the Jabari, or the Council?" T'Challa asked wearily. He had not meant to have this confrontation today; he had merely been checking in on Barnes, as he did once every few months. (The super soldier's state was improving steadily, where it had been sporadic at the very beginning, but also slowly, where it had been getting just the slightest bit swifter in the final few weeks of Shuri's presence. Or maybe T'Challa was being overly-interperative and assuming that nothing worked quite as well without his sister's hand in it.) M'Baku seeking T'Challa out in the lab had been unexpected, but not surprising; the Jabari leader had already become the most aggressively persistent person on the Council, when it came to impromptu follow-ups on things discussed in meetings.

Really, this had been inevitable.

"The Council," M'Baku answered hotly. "Was it your intention to so disrespect your advisors-"

"I meant no disrespect, Lord M'Baku," T'Challa said. "I made a deal with Captain America."

"An outsider," M'Baku noted. "And a common one, at that; not even a leader of a nation. I don't believe he even earned the rank of captain."

"Thank you, but I don't think my dealings with outsiders are subject to your approval."

"Hmph." M'Baku was headstrong, but he was honorable down to his bones; he would not act outside his rank.

Bucky scratched his head. His lengthening hair was tied up into a bun, and he had his head subtly tilted so that the lab lights didn't shine so harshly in his eyes. He was used to his hut in the countryside.

"How long has he been here, then?" M'Baku asked.

"He was brought here shortly after my father's murder. Shuri was in charge of his rehabilitation."

"How _is_ Shuri, anyway?" Bucky chimed in.

"Yes," M'Baku said, "how goes the dispensing of our secrets?"

And they were back to form.

"Per her latest report, she is doing well," T'Challa told both of them. He left it at that, as the news articles and paparazzi coverage (photos of her out walking and chatting with some CEO of an American corporation, first, and then of her visits to the schools and hospitals, and sometimes just candids of her "outfit of the day") were not pertinent right now, though Barnes would probably enjoy hearing about it. He and Shuri had formed a near-fraternal bond, at some point in the rehab process. When T'Challa would deign pop in on their sessions, he had been just as likely to find her teaching him dances or him telling her war stories as he had been to find them actually running tests.

"...with her colonizer friends," M'Baku added. _That_ he knew only by coincidence, from having overheard the wrong thing at the wrong time.

"I'm sure my sister makes friends wherever she goes," T'Challa said. "I consider it the mark of a truly rich soul."

"That it is," M'Baku conceded fairly, then digressed: "I hope I will be so trusted as to be kept abreast of such secrets in the future." He took his leave, then, ascending the spiral ramps of the laboratory with his long, strong gait.

"Those that pertain to you, certainly," T'Challa said quietly.

"He seems nice," Bucky noted.

"He is...a good man," T'Challa said measuredly. "And a trying one."

"When you first came in, you were saying something about..."

"Right." He'd had a reason for visiting besides the periodic check-in. "We've been spotting some attempts at espionage into the exchange programs: targeting both Nakia's and Shuri's, but especially Shuri's."

Bucky's hands clenched. "Is she in danger?"

"Not eminently." Although T'Challa's grave tone probably betrayed his concern. "This was to be expected, as well; there will always be those who want power, and Shuri's mind contains the key to a lot of power."

"But you're telling _me_ this," Bucky observed.

"Yes."

"You want me to protect her."

T'Challa's gaze was steady. "Your training is...less refined than that of some of our own fighters, but you are an enhanced individual with no shortage of skill. It might come to that. You are not ready yet," he qualified. "But there may come a time when I ask this of you. Will you say yes at that time?"

"Protect a good person for once? Yes."

T'Challa smiled, at this not-unexpected answer. "Then we'd best do something about your status as an international fugitive."

...

"Whoa," MJ said. She had an email open on her phone, and she was gaping at it.

"Did you get in?" Peter asked impatiently. They were in _her_ room, this time; he had knocked on her window less than a minute ago, and as soon as she'd opened it for him (with a dry "You couldn't have just texted, like a person?"), he'd gasped out, "Check your email!"

The acceptance letters were out for the lab assistant assistant positions.

MJ read through it, even though the first sentence was adequate for getting the gist of what it contained.

"Well, did you?" Peter demanded, as if the suspense left him in agony.

"I, uh...yeah," MJ said simply, her tone still lined with surprise.

Peter's whole expression brightened. "You did?"

"Yeah, I..."

MJ had barely given confirmation before Peter was squeezing her in a congratulatory hug. "I'm so happy for you!"

She wanted to ask if _he'd_ gotten in, but for now she could only laboriously exhale, "So, that super strength..."

He released her with an abashed expression and an extremely pinkened face. "Sorry. Boy, that was cliche: the too-tight superhero hug. _Such_ a cliche. And also now I'm kind of realizing that you're in your pajamas and I definitely should have called first-"

"Don't sweat it; pajamas are just clothes. Society telling us it's obscene to wear soft things in front of people is just an arbitrary way of controlling us and making us buy more stuff than we need." Now that she was able to breathe, MJ did ask: "What about you? You get in?"

"Not even close," Peter said ruefully. "Ned got waitlisted, but I was absolutely denied." Whoa. What?

MJ was dazed by the simultaneous feelings of disappointment that Peter wouldn't be joining her and shock that she had been chosen instead of him.

"And you didn't tell Shuri I was applying?"

"I didn't tell. And I don't think she oversees that stuff anyway."

MJ shook her head. "Whoa."

"Um, Michelle? MJ? Chellie Jo?" (Apparently they had unlocked the Weird Improvised Nicknames tier of friendship. Hopefully they got past that one soon.) Peter put his hands on his shoulders and looked earnestly into her face. "We have to celebrate! Come on; this is 'tell everybody' time! When does it say you start?"

"Well..." MJ scanned through the email again, despite the fact that she was pretty sure she remembered that much. "In twenty days. The flight is in fifteen days. So I'll be here for the end of school, at least. Not sure what those five days between arriving and starting are supposed to go towards..."

"Getting settled in, probably; it's a pretty high-end internship," Peter said. He was positively glowing over this victory for her. Why was he so great? And why were his eyes so brown and pretty? And why...wasn't she reacting the way he was?

It was like her brain was on another planet.

No, it was like she was keeping her distance from excitement until she deemed it safe to emote. Which was probably why she kept rereading the email, to make sure she wasn't missing a line or word that would tell her that this was all a lie.

Honestly. _Since when am I insecure?_

"Alright," she said decisively. "Time to Google-stalk the other winners."

"That's more like it!" Peter webbed her laptop over to them from across the room, and they combed through the website linked to the email. "Only five winners," Peter marveled. "Midtown is going to _grovel_."

"It's like I found a Golden Ticket."

"So many people are going to bother you now."

"I'd better put together a secret identity. Got any tips?" MJ opened each of the other winners' profiles in a new tab. 

The profiles were straightforward: a photo at the top (and MJ wished she had submitted a different picture of herself; she hated to see herself with flat-ironed hair, but that was her most recent professional photo), a quote below it, and more or less the person's resume below that. She was pleased to see that only she and one other person came from "prestigious" schools; the other three went to ordinary, even under-budgeted, institutions. One person hadn't even tried for a decent-looking photo and had just sent in a poorly-lit selfie where he was not-smiling and doing a peace sign.

"Harley Keener from Tennessee gives no craps," MJ chuckled. "Wish I'd thought of that."

"Edgelord detected," Peter agreed.

"He's too cool for us, Peter."

They spent the better part of an hour in a vortex of Google searches to get a feel for the people who would be MJ's company. It was low-stakes research; if socializing failed, well, she was bringing a book anyway. At the very worst, this was still something to add to her resume; she didn't _need_ to make more friends.

Eventually, she said, "Alright, close your spider eyes, dork," and she got changed into her capitalism-mandated Not PajamasTM.

"Do you have plans today?" Peter asked with his eyes closed. "I could call Ned; we could all go do something."

MJ took her scarf off and worked her hair into a ponytail. "Like what?"

"I dunno. Bowling, roller skate, laser tag; normal teen stuff."

"Won't you just decimate any competition with your weird powers?"

"I definitely will."

She chuckled. "Yeah, sure. I'll invite the decathlon team. Make it a proper...shindig." Well, that was a word she had just said with her mouth. No going back now. "Okay, later. Gonna tell my moms."

"Cool. Later."

He exited through the window, of course. MJ sat back down on her bed and read through the email again. She had come to terms with its realness, but still...whoa.

All of a sudden, the implied thing that she hadn't been consciously thinking about suddenly struck her, full force:

She was going to be in the same room as Shuri in twenty days.

...

"Very good!" Shuri high-fived the ten-year-old girl who had just correctly drawn a model of an atom of vibranium. "Look at you: scientist in training. You'll have to take over the lab from me when I get old, right?" Her smile was real; visiting these schools and seeing the excitement on all these little faces was easily better than the Lucky Charms to which she might have accidentally become addicted. ( _"Brother, you don't understand; they're magically delicious!"_ )

The little girl beamed back, nodding with a starstruck look in her eyes. Her hair was freshly braided- Shuri could imagine a meticulous parent or guardian saying that she _had_ to have fresh braids, for Princess Shuri's visit -with colorful bobbles and ribbons, and she wore a dress with Wakanda's flag on it. There were a lot of Wakandan flags, around every school she'd visited so far; it warmed Shuri's heart.

"I have a Twitter," the girl chirped eagerly. "Can you follow me on Twitter?"

This started up a brief chorus of children shouting out their social media handles, until a teacher and the principal both quieted them down with scandalized, almost humiliated looks. Apparently it was mortifying for children to behave like children.

Shuri, for her part, was cracking up; that had been one of the most adorable things she had ever witnessed. She hugged the girl who had asked first, and a camera flashed.

"I don't actually have a personal Twitter account," she confessed, and she allowed the children to be disappointed for a second (A little bit of trolling was healthy for the soul.), "but how about I make one, right now?"

The cheer was incomprehensible.

She spent about five minutes collaborating on her Twitter profile with these ten-year-olds, taking requests for her Twitter Bio until she arrived at the perfect amalgamation of the very worst memes, and then she took a selfie with all of them and set it as her photo.

It was a good time, and it became actual news within the hour.

Then she stopped goofing off, and they got back to science for a little while, and then Wakandan culture.

"Can I be one of your bodyguards when I grow up?" a little boy asked, nodding his head towards the Doras, who smiled indulgently.

Per tradition, he absolutely could not, but Shuri was not a crusher of dreams. "Do you want to be?"

The boy nodded.

"Well, then maybe once you're older you can ask Okoye; she's the general. Until then, study hard in case you change your mind. I was thinking about becoming a dancer, when I was your age." (Not entirely true; she had always loved dancing, but she'd also been in love with engineering for nearly her entire life. Still, semi-lying to kids for a good cause had to be ethically acceptable.)

She did some Wakandan dances with them, and then some American dances, and they ended off with a review of the science they'd discussed, and then the students all left on their buses or walked home.

Then Shuri stayed behind with the administrators to talk about the grant she was making. 

That was less fun, but it was over pretty quickly. Some members of the school board tried to convince her to donate to the entire school district instead of this specific school, which sounded to her like they were deliberately missing the entire point, seeing as this school was noticeably poorer than every other school in the district.

"So, if we're done?" Shuri rose from her seat, chipper now that she had made it out of that monotony, but then a voice spoke up from the doorway:

"Not quite yet."

Shuri turned and found, to her mild exasperation, Harry Osborne. Again.

The administrators reacted to his presence like this was now Double Christmas. He strode in, with the bright "VISITOR" sticker on his chest, and shook Shuri's hand. "Pleasure to see you again."

"Who let you in?" she joked.

"I heard your generous grant offer," he said, now somewhat facing their "audience" as if they were in an amateur play or something, "and I thought I'd top it off with a grant of my own: double or nothing. How does that sound?"

Shuri literally didn't care what he thought he was doing here or what he hoped to convey to her; if his surprise appearance caused this meeting to stretch out, she was going to be impolite and leave. She had lab demonstrations tomorrow, and she had hoped to use what was left of today to keep cracking on the encrypted information that Peter had sent her.

Like any new problem, she found herself thinking about it, thinking through it, whenever she wasn't actively doing anything else, or even when she was. Her mind itched to take root in it again so she could get it finished, get things answered.

Security was the only reason it took so long; at every stage she had to be sure that the code wasn't malignant. She wasn't going to be the idiot who let malware or spyware in. For good measure, she used a server that didn't connect to any of the lab's data, so that even if she mistakenly missed some ill-meaning code, it wouldn't be able to access anything secret. Her curiosity made her restless, but not over-hasty.

The meeting finally ended, and Harry Osborne predictably followed her out:

"I was actually hoping to talk to you."

"I could never have guessed." She raised a hand for the Doras to let him follow; even if he became a threat, they could easily take him out, and she wasn't too terribly annoyed by his presence, now that she was at least leaving the budget meeting.

"I hope you've had time to reconsider your initial stance on partnering with Oscorp. I think we could really come to agree."

Shuri laughed, lightly. "Why would I? You're so generous when I don't," she teased.

Harry gave the obligatory self-deprecating chuckle, but for no longer than was socially mandated. "Figured you might be hesitant. Which brings me to the real reason I came here."

"You mean it _wasn't_ just for charity?" Maybe she was laying it on a little thick, with her jokes at the expense of this farcical facade, but she couldn't help it. This situation was so _weird_. This sort of barely-veiled maneuvering never happened to her, and she couldn't help finding the inelegance hilarious.

"I'd like to offer you a tour of Oscorp. So I can show you what we're really about." His expression was that of someone who was sure they had just moved the winning chess piece.

"As much as I'd love to, my schedule is full." Her car was in sight. There were cameras on the other side of the street, getting shots of the two of them. Shuri felt slightly bummed that the pictures that had been taken of her with the schoolchildren would probably be assigned less importance, now. She knew that the kids would love seeing themselves on the news.

"Until when?" Harry probed.

"Well, you know what it's like to come from a dynasty," Shuri ironically repeated what he had said to her once. "It's busy stuff."

She climbed into the car. Harry looked as if he might have kept talking to her through the rolled-up window or something, but the Doras warded him off.

Surely this was below his dignity? She had been led to believe that CEOs were sort of important. Shouldn't he have underlings who could stalk her in his stead? If his concerns were exclusively business-related, why was he making everything so personal?

All questions whose answers were of little import to her. Harry Osborn was a puzzle, but not an interesting one. Her answers to his questions weren't going to change. Peter's encrypted hard drive, on the other hand? Endless intrigue. Many angles. It could take her months, at the pace she was going, and that was just excruciating.

When the car pulled up in front of her lab-home to let her out, Shuri swiftly made for the elevator. She had to dump her demonstration stuff in her room before she could get to that sweet sweet encryption.

"How did it go?" one of the Doras who had stayed behind asked.

"They were a lot of fun," Shuri replied earnestly, but she didn't slow her pace as she swiftly unlocked and opened the door to her suite, then the door to her bedroom.

As the door opened, she saw something hastily scuttle across the wall.

Reacting quickly, she threw the first thing on hand: her phone. Which...yeah, it would be somewhat annoying if she had to replace it after she had installed so many modifications, but she nailed the little crawly thing before it could escape. Both her phone and the object fell to the floor.

Shuri had time only to identify the object as something made of metal and clearly robotic before it was trying to escape again. She grabbed a decorative vase, skidded across the floor, and trapped the mini-robot more permanently. Which gave Shuri some time to breathe and process what had just happened.

"Aneka!" she called. "I think we have a security breach!"

The little robot thing struggled against the thick glass walls of the vase trapping it, but it had clearly been made for stealth, not strength. It looked sort of like a spider, but if a spider had been put together by someone who had only had spiders described to them and had never seen one personally; it had a spherical body ( _not_ a body and a head, like a spider would have, but that could have just been pragmatism) and eight appendages, but the appendages were flexible, with seemingly a thousand joints. It made for more versatile movement, but Shuri couldn't say what it did for speed.

"So you're the one who's been casting shadows, are you?" she murmured.

Aneka and another Dora rushed into the room, spears in hand, and took in Shuri's calm, seated form, then the little metal thing she had caught.

"Where did it come from?"

"I don't know, but I'm dying to open it up," Shuri said, rubbing her hands together.

"Not until we've done a scan of the building," Aneka said firmly. "Ikuya, get us a box to put that thing in. Shuri, come with me; you'll stay on the hovercraft until we're sure this building is safe."

Shuri sighed but did as asked. What an inconvenient time for a security breach.

She picked up her phone on the way out and was pleased to see that the only problem was a cracked screen. She could mend that easily enough. Maybe give Mother a call, while she was waiting on the hovercraft. The security breach would worry her, but not being told about the security breach by her own child would infuriate her. And anyway, Mother was used to her loved ones being in dangerous situations. Shuri sometimes wondered if Queen Ramonda would have preferred a quiet life, with children who _weren't_ warriors or science ambassadors. Herself? Well, this sort of thing was in her blood and bone.

Or maybe she was just not taking things as seriously as she should have; the trek to the building's exit with Aneka was _tense_. Being trusted with the life of the king's little sister probably wasn't a picnic, Shuri guessed.

Still, Aneka could stand to loosen up a bit.

They stepped out into the evening air, and Shuri found herself sweeping an expectant gaze over her surroundings, wondering when the inevitable ambush would be taking place. Her hands fidgeted around her bracelets, ready to activate the blasters if foes presented themselves. But no, the vicinity was empty. Every security breach didn't mean an attack.

Killmonger's takeover had really done a number on her perception of danger, hadn't it. First it had been reactionary jumpiness, in the days immediately after the coup, and now it was calm expectancy.

"This should only take about an hour," Aneka told her as she ascended into the hovercraft.

"Can I play with the spy robot while I wait?" Shuri asked innocently.

Aneka finally shed her stonily distressed expression in favor of an exasperated smile. "No, princess."

...

"So, you leave next Sunday?"

MJ, who was leaning against the wall of the roller rink, turned her head lazily to reply to Flash, who was leaning over the roller rink wall from the other side and drinking an orange Fanta. "Yup. Looks like it."

Flash nodded mutely. He didn't seem about to reply, but he also didn't seem like he was going to walk away. So they just kind of stood there for a few seconds, MJ amusedly watching him nod. 

After a few seconds, he let out a lofty, "Well, good job," and walked away to the arcade.

MJ smiled; that might be as close as Flash would get to humility.

"Hey!" a voice called out, and Peter skated up to her with perfect grace and balance. Yeah, it was insane that anyone didn't know he was Spiderman; he had been the hugest klutz before the bite. "You're not skating."

"I've made the choice to wear skates while standing still," MJ said with dignity.

"Is it because you fell four times?"

"Ha ha; you counted."

"Come on."

He took her hand, and she rolled her eyes playfully but allowed him to ease her away from the wall. Her feet struggled haphazardly to figure out this whole walking thing when there were wheels screwing around with her friction, and "Brand New Key" started playing over the loud speaker as Peter caught her other arm to steady her. One hand on hers, one on her arm, and they made eye contact and their faces were close and that weird Blossom Dearie-esque voice, crackling through the place's terrible sound system, was lilting: _"It almost seems like you're avoiding me./I'm okay alone, but you've got something I need, well..."_

"The straights are at it again!" Abe called out, zooming past them so closely that MJ almost fell _again_.

"Bold of you to assume I'm straight!" MJ called, daring to relinquish her death grip on Peter to flick off Abe's departing form.

"That was an old meme," Peter teased.

"It wasn't a meme; it was an...adopted sentence format."

Peter chuckled. His cheeks were red. They were standing still, in the middle of the rink. Crap, if she fell against him, this would be a rom com. She was not going to be in a rom com.

"Alright, step aside. I'm going in."

Peter let go of her and swept his arm out as if to offer her the floor.

_Well, just make sure the forces moving you forward exceed the forces pulling you in other directions, then counterbalance to come to a stop. Should be simple. Commit to it._

Yeah, no.

She was on her buttocks in under ten seconds.

Peter skated over. "So, that started out pretty good."

"Remind me why I didn't choose laser tag."

"You said it romanticizes warlike scenarios to make it easier for recruiters to manipulate-"

"Right. I remember now."

Rather than help her up, Peter sat down next to her.

"You didn't tell Shuri I'm coming, did you?" she asked him quietly.

"No. You asked me not to."

She rested her head on Peter's shoulder, casually, because non-exploitative physical contact is not inherently indecent and should not be treated as such. "Thank you for celebrating with me."

"Are you excited?"

"I'm going to explode." She said it in a perfect monotone, but it was not an exaggeration.

Peter rested his head on her head. She could feel his heartbeat. It was a little fast, even though he seemed relaxed. It felt like he was falling asleep, which was pretty cute but would get abruptly un-cute if he fell over or drooled on her or something. (Man, her mind sure ruined things sometimes.) But he was probably just...resting.

Ned plopped down across from them after a few minutes. "Hi, guys," he said nonchalantly.

"Hey Ned," MJ said.

Peter said, "What's up?", and he didn't sit up.

"Have you followed Shuri on Twitter yet?"

Surprised, Peter said, "Shuri made a Twitter?", while at the same time MJ said "Social media is a sham."

"Don't you have a Snapchat?" Ned asked, narrowing his eyes skeptically at MJ.

"I do. The brevity of the format perfectly compliments my style of humor."

"And a Tumblr."

"It's well-suited to ranting about politics and getting art commissions. I don't see your point."

"I just followed her," Peter announced, having whipped out his phone as soon as Ned introduced the subject.

They sat in silence for a second as Peter read through Shuri's profile.

"So, are you two an item now?" Ned asked suddenly.

Peter almost dropped his phone. " _Ned._ We...I mean, we're..."

MJ decided to employ her penchant for unabashed candor. "If we are, I'm not complaining."

Peter's fumbling stilled, and his spluttering quieted. "You...Really?"

"I mean, I think society's emphasis on _coupling_ is just a symptom of society's emphasis on the nuclear family, which is deliberately engineered by wealthy capitalists for the sake of sales, but...Yeah. I mean, I like you...well enough. I guess." She would have ended it at "I like you", but she'd panicked.

(Ned got up and left them there.)

"I...guess I like you...also. Um..." He glanced down at his phone screen, where Shuri's Twitter page was still up.

It didn't take a genius to guess the significance of that glance. "I get it, you know. She's a bombshell, and she's brilliant. She's an icon; I definitely don't know how I think I'm going to talk to her in person in less than a month."

"You're brilliant, too," Peter was quick to say. "You're _both_ so amazing. I mean..." He winced, as though waiting for her to look outraged. "Was that wrong to say?"

"Not if it's how you feel," MJ said. "Exclusivity isn't for everyone. Definitely not for people who don't even know if they're a couple. And I don't do possessiveness."

Peter looked at her wonderingly.

"...also, I might be into Shuri as well. What do, am I right?" MJ laughed, then grimaced. "She's...insanely cool."

"She _is_ ," Peter agreed sincerely, which coaxed a smile out of MJ.

"I hate to say it, but she _might_ be out of my league."

"She's so far out of my league, she'd have to take Thor's rainbow bridge to even see me."

They went on like that, talking about Shuri and one-upping each other with their jokes about their own unworthiness, until one of the rink managers rolled over to suggest that they sit in the sitting area instead of the skating floor, which was a pretty fair critique to which they promptly complied.

...

Peter and Ned and Addison and Abe were there to see her off when the Sunday of her departure rolled around. (Liz even sent her a congratulatory text right before she got on the plane, which was cool because, since leaving, Liz had only texted MJ once, to say that she knew she would be great as team captain. Betty was the only person Liz really still talked to, here.)

Not much of note or interest happened on the flight; MJ sat in a window seat and read some Kafka, or intermittently napped. She was glad the program hadn't sent a private jet for the interns but had instead just bought them plane tickets. She wondered if Shuri had ever taken a commercial flight before.

Anyway, it was after midnight when she landed in California. A bald, dark-skinned woman was waiting for her at the airport, carrying a sign with "Michelle Jones" written on it.

"Hi," MJ said, hefting her backpack as she approached the woman who managed to look intimidating and battle-ready despite being dressed business casual. "I'm Michelle."

"You have identification?" the woman asked, her voice flutelike and her Wakandan accent thick. "And your confirmation number?"

MJ handed both over and eyed up her surroundings. Shortly, her ID and confirmation form were returned, and the woman said:

"Right this way."

The drive to the lab was about fifteen minutes, in which MJ mostly just stared out the window in silence, content to daydream and observe. She had already texted her moms and her friends that she had landed safely. She felt bizarrely at peace, despite how conscious she was that she was alone in a strange city, about to take part in a strange program with strange people and also Princess Shuri of Wakanda.

The other interns were probably already there.

As much as MJ wasn't there to make friends and didn't care what they thought of her, she found herself wondering what the social scene would be. And to what extent Shuri would be involved. And to what extent she would even be able to do the work they asked of her; if she ended up being the one dumb not-STEM person, that would kind of suck.

"Here we are," the woman announced, preceding MJ out of the car while a pair of attendants retrieved her bags. The building that loomed over them must have been the lab. "Follow me; the other interns are already in the suite."

Well, there was that confirmed.

"Is it a roommate situation, or...?" MJ quickened her pace to accommodate the woman's long-legged stride as they passed through the doors to the building, and then she was suddenly colliding with another bald woman, this one holding some kind of scanning device.

"Abduct your arms," the new woman said, and while she was scanning MJ (probably for weapons or something), the first woman replied:

"All of the interns will share a suite. The bedrooms will be separate, and your luggage will be brought up shortly."

The scan finished, and MJ put her arms down. "Okay. Cool." Her gaze kept wandering over the building's impressive lobby. "Do...either of you know what we're supposed to be doing for the next five days?"

"I have a few activities planned," said a voice from the opening to an adjacent hallway.

MJ knew that voice. Perhaps childishly, she clapped both hands over her mouth before she turned and faced the speaker. "Shuri!" she exclaimed.

Shuri's expression, initially a welcoming smile, suddenly appeared struck with recognition. She tilted her head and hesitantly said, "Michelle?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I was a bit late on this one. This chapter is kind of transitionary, which might have contributed to my difficulty writing it; I needed to get the characters from point A to point B in a way that wasn't boring. Not sure to what extent I succeeded. 
> 
> Thank you for your comments! It's great to know the things that people like about the story; please keep it up! I love reading them!
> 
> (Also, fyi, the level of deference that Peter and MJ feel towards Shuri isn't something I'm recommending for stable relationships, and it's something they will have to get past; it's not super healthy to put prospective partners on a pedestal.)


End file.
